(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for managing a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader.
The present invention is supported by the IT R&D program of MIC/IITA [2007-S-024-01, Development of SSI(Software System Infrastructure) Platform Technology for Advanced RFID services].
(b) Description of the Related Art
RFID reader management technology is used to discriminate an RFID tag existing in a recognition range of a specific RFID reader by controlling the specific RFID reader. Various level software solutions, such as a reader adaptor for transmitting control instructions to an RFID reader, RFID middleware for generating an event by interpreting collected RFID tag data, and the like, are used in the RFID reader management technology.
In this case, the RFID tag and the RFID reader have peculiar characteristics depending on frequency bandwidth or electric power that is supported by a corresponding device, a communication method, and the rate of transmitted/received data. That is, when auxiliary electric power is used for communication between the RFID tag and the RFID reader, a read range is increased. A read range and data transmission speed depend on the frequency bandwidth and frequency wavelength of the RFID reader.
Therefore, when different kinds of RFID tags should be simultaneously used, different RFID readers for communicating with the respective RFID tags should be simultaneously controlled to collect data. For example, when a RFID tag using ultrahigh frequency (UHF) having a band of 900 MHz and a RFID tag using high frequency (HF) having a band of 13.56 MHz are used together to exactly discriminate airfreight, two kinds of RFID readers for recognizing the RFID tags should be simultaneously controlled.
Since individual instructions should be transmitted to each of the RFID readers in order to simultaneously control the RFID readers having different frequency bandwidths as described above, it is not possible to perform consistent control. Further, when each of the RFID readers is controlled by individual instructions, there is a problem that data collected by the RFID reader should be separately processed. Therefore, there is a demand for an apparatus and method capable of consistently controlling RFID readers and RFID tags that have different frequency bandwidths.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.